michael update

By Robbie on November 6, 2009

The recording is now finished on my Michael Jackson record. (It was allegedly finished in 2001 but I changed my mind about that as the years went by.) As I mentioned before, it will be available in both CD and MP3 download format; the files you"ll be able to buy wherever files are sold online, the disc through this store's site only. The Hon. Mary Gunn, formerly of Yep Roc Int'l, now of Lone Gunn Design in Chapel Hill, is hard at work on the art, and mastering is next week in N***ville. If all goes as it should, the music will sound even better after Mary and Jim DeMain, the masterer, get done with it.

I don't want to jinx or spoil the package by giving away too much about its contents, but, in the hope of arousing your eager curiosity, I want to mention a few of the better-known singers and players on this wide-ranging album. It was my first and so far only chance to play with Tony Trischka, the legendary banjoist whom I first heard playing with Breakfast Special in 1973. After that he founded the ahead-of-their-time newgrass band Skyline, recorded a lot of fine solo records featuring every banjo style imaginable from Scruggs to Irish to avant-garde, and taught Bela Fleck how to play. In fact, Bela himself stopped by and hung for a little bit as we tried our hand at an 18-minute psycho-grass version of "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough." The five minutes that sounded best to my ears will show up on the final product. Censorship!

Azita sings, or kind of wails, on one tune. If you saw my Hideout set of Michael Jackson songs last year, you saw the "Iranian Atom Bomb" in action. If you didn't, I can't really describe what she does -- you might have a listen to one of her outrageous records.

Joy Lynn White and Nora O'Connor are two lady singers I always love hearing and singing with. These encomia are getting shorter as I go on writing. It's nothing against Joy and Nora.

Shellac is a magnif icent punk band in Chicago whose three members I've been friends with for years and years. If we haven't gotten together on record before, it's only because we have absolutely nothing in common, musically speaking. After hearing our collaboration, you may still think we have nothing in common.

Sam Bush and John Cowan were the two principals of New Grass Revival, which was man for man the best playing and singing acoustic group I expect ever to see in the flesh in my lifetime. I of course didn't get to see the Bluegrass Boys in 1948. But, swearing to God, I think the New Grass guys were just as formidable and monolithic in the 1980s. If you get their two-disc anthology and hear the crazy shit they pulled off on, for example, "Austin City Limits," you will marvel at the human capacity for excellence and imagination. And cocaine abuse.  

John Hughey is one of the greatest pedal steel players ever. He died a couple years ago -- I promised to put some memories of John in this space and will very soon -- and I think this may be his last playing to be released. Man, is it ever good playing.

Danny Barnes is on the record, but not playing anything exactly. Also Dallas Wayne shows up in what you might call a Toby Keith sort of role.

It's great to be able to work at music with your heroes and friends...it strips away your cynicism and sophistication and makes you feel about five years old.